The BBC has finally come clean about its bias, says a former editor, who wrote Yes, Minister

Antony Jay

In the past four weeks there have been two remarkable changes in the public attitude to the BBC. The first and most newsworthy one was precipitated by the faked trailer of the Queen walking out of a photographic portrait session with Annie Leibovitz.

It was especially damaging because the licence fee is based on a public belief that the BBC offers a degree of integrity and impartiality which its commercial competitors cannot achieve.

But in the longer term I believe that the second change is even more significant. It started with the BBC's own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional "liberal" bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC's allies seem to accept it.

It has been on parade again these past few weeks on the Radio 4 programme The Crime of Our Lives. It included (of course) the ritual demoni-sation of Margaret Thatcher (uninterested in crime . . . surprisingly did not take a closer interest), a swipe at Conservative magistrates and their friends in the golf club and occasional quotes from Douglas Hurd to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the whole tenor of the programme was liberal/ progressive/ reformist.

The series even included a strong suggestion that Thatcher's economic policies were the cause of rising crime. So presumably she shouldn't have done what she did?

There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy.

This programme was quite clearly on the side of the former and the producer/writer was a member of BBC staff. Can you imagine a BBC staff member slanting a programme towards the case for a stricter penal policy?

The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple - much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?

They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word "liberal" would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let's call it "media liberalism".

It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmil-lan's premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.

But we were not just anti-Macmil-lan; we were antiindustry, anti-capital-ism, antiadvertising, antiselling, antiprofit, antipatriotism, antimonarchy, antiempire, antipolice, antiarmed forces, antibomb, antiauthority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place - you name it, we were anti it.

Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain - Britain from 1939 to 1945.

I was nine when the war started, and 15 when it ended, and accepted these restrictions unquestioningly. I was astounded when identity cards were abolished. And the social system was at least as authoritarian as the political system. It was shocking for an unmarried couple to sleep together and a disgrace to have a baby out of wedlock. A homosexual act incurred a jail sentence. Procuring an abortion was a criminal offence. Violent young criminals were birched, older ones were flogged and murderers were hanged.

So how did we get from there to here? Unless we understand that, we shall never get inside the media liberal mind. And the starting point is the realisation that there have always been two principal ways of misunderstanding a society: by looking down on it from above and by looking up at it from below. In other words, by identifying with institutions or by identifying with individuals.

To look down on society from above, from the point of view of the ruling groups, the institutions, is to see the dangers of the organism splitting apart - the individual components shooting off in different directions until everything dissolves into anarchy.

To look up at society from below, from the point of view of the lowest group, the governed, is to see the dangers of the organism growing ever more rigid and oppressive until it fossilises into a monolithic tyranny.

Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for liberty, equality, self-expression, representation, freedom of speech and action and worship, and the rights of the individual. The reason for the popularity of these misunderstandings is that both views are correct as far as they go and both sets of dangers are real, but there is no "right" point of view.

The most you can ever say is that sometimes society is in danger from too much authority and uniformity and sometimes from too much freedom and variety.

In retrospect it seems pretty clear that the 1940s and 1950s were years of excessive authority and uniformity. It was certainly clear to me and my media liberal colleagues in the BBC. It was not that we in the BBC openly and publicly criticised the government on air; the BBC's commitment to impartiality was more strictly enforced in those days.

But the topics we chose and the questions we asked were slanted against institutions and towards oppressed individuals, just as we achieved political balance by pitting the most plausible critics of government against its most bigoted supporters.

Ever since 1963 the institutions have been the villains of the media liberals. The police, the armed services, the courts, political parties, multi-national corporations - when things go wrong they are the usual suspects.

But our hostility to institutions was not - and is not - shared by the majority of our fellow citizens: most of our opinions were at odds with the majority of the audience and the electorate. Indeed the BBC's own 2007 report on impartiality found that 57% of poll respondents said that "broadcasters often fail to reflect the views of people like me".

There are four new factors which in my lifetime have brought about the changes that have shaped media liberalism, encouraged its spread and significantly increased its influence and importance.

The first of these is detribalisation. That our species has evolved a genetic predisposition to form tribal groups is generally accepted as an evolutionary fact. This grouping - of not more than about five or six hundred - supplies us with our identity, status system, territorial instinct, behavioural discipline and moral code.

We in the BBC were acutely detribalised; we were in a tribal institution, but we were not of it. Nor did we have any geographical tribe; we lived in commuter suburbs, we knew very few of our neighbours and took not the slightest interest in local government. In fact we looked down on it. Councillors were self-important nobodies and mayors were a pompous joke.

We belonged instead to a dispersed "metropolitan media arts graduate" tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the royal family, the defence budget - it's a wonder we ever got home.

The second factor that shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain's problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.

We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say "Tesco" to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, "Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers." The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers does not register on their radar.

The third factor arises from the nature of mass media. The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about 8m. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.

The fourth factor is what has been called "isolation technology". Fifty years ago people did things together much more. The older politicians we interviewed in the early Tonight days were happier in public meetings than in television studios.

In those days people went to evening meetings. They formed collective opinions. In many places party allegiance was collective and hereditary rather than a matter of individual choice based on a logical comparison of policies.

These four factors have significantly accelerated and indeed intensified the spread of media liberalism since I ceased to be a BBC employee 40 years ago.

By Debbie SchlusselThanks to the many readers who sent me the Windsor Star article about the Hezbollah CBS billboard in downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada (right over the river from us here in Detroit). The Star is an excellent paper and used to be edited by a friend of mine. I read it regularly, as the same Sharia that is beginning to be instituted here and the same Islamicization we see is magnified ten-fold just a few miles away in another country.

CBS' Hezbollah Billboard in Canad

An unidentified party paid to post a pro-Hezbollah billboard, featuring photos of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, as well as other Hezbollah officials. While that is disturbing, it really is not surprising if you've ever been to Windsor, especially lately. Hezbollah and HAMAS supporters who can't get in here, live freely over there. And others who can't get in here, regularly are smuggled through in car trunks from over there to here. And Hezbollah supporters here have training camps over there.The billboard may be against the law in Canada, where free speech laws are less absolute, but it's definitely illegal under U.S. law for other reasons.

What's disturbing is that CBS owns the billboard and allowed it to be posted. This is a violation of federal law here in America. It makes no difference that the billboard is in Canada. Federal law prohibits providing material support, including communications (such as a billboard), to terrorist groups. Hezbollah is not only on the State Department Terrorist List, it is also a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity by the U.S. Department of Treasury.Therefore, with the posting of this billboard supporting Hezbollah, CBS has gone beyond the bounds of free speech and entered the boundaries of illegality.Unfortunately, nothing will likely happen to CBS for doing so. Who enforces the laws? Well, our spineless, wimpy, partial-to-Muslims Justice Department does. They will never pursue CBS for doing so. So, CBS will get away with it.

Conceivably, a victim of Hezbollah terrorism and his/her relatives could try to sue CBS over this material support, but it's a stretch. Such a suit, though, would be interesting because it would force CBS, through discovery, to disclose exactly who paid for the billboard, and let us know exactly who is working for Hezbollah in North America--at least, in connection with the billboard.For now, you can contact CBS and protest this billboard. Ask CBS why they will allow their billboards (and who knows what other media outlets--CBS radio? CBS television network?) to be used as vessels for a terrorist group's propaganda . . . a terrorist group that murdered over 300 U.S. Marines and civilians in barracks and an embassy in Beirut, almost 100 people in the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy, and countless U.S. soldiers in Iraq against whom Hezbollah is producing IEDs.

And there is another thing not specified in the article. Windsor's Mayor, Eddie Francis, is a Lebanese Maronite Christian. He is generally a good guy, but he is under pressure from the Muslim community in Detroit, with whom he has broken bread. I'm glad to see he denounced the billboard. For him--a pro-Western Christian Arab in a city with a geometrically-growing Muslim Arab population--that was courageous and laudable. Compared to spineless politicians here, like Michael Chertoff--who regularly visits the open agents and supporters of Iran and Hezbollah--that is a breath of fresh air.

Another positive development: The Windsor Jewish community--to whom I once spoke and with whom I have a good relationship--is, unlike most Jewish communities here in America, especially in Detroitistan. They are a small community that fights against the pan-Islamist winds (in Detroit, the Jewish "leadership" embraces and bows down to those winds). They are less liberal and more proud to be Jews and Canadians. They've spoken out harshly against the billboard, whereas here in Detroit, the Jews would embrace it as a great thing (so-called Detroit Jewish "leaders," like Sharona Shapiro, regularly kiss the butts of Hezbollah's and Iran's agents and full-fledged supporters here).And for those who keep telling me that most Muslims are against terrorism, please tell me why every Muslim intervied by The Windsor Star praised Hezbollah. Most Muslims may not be involved in terrorism. But most Muslims actively cheer it on. Wake up, Dhummis (not you the readers of this site).More from The Windsor Star:Members of the Jewish and Lebanese Christian communities in Windsor are outraged by the appearance of a billboard that appears to promote Hezbollah -- an organization the Canadian government considers terrorist."That organization is banned in Canada," said Harvey Kessler, executive director of the Windsor Jewish Community Centre. "How can that billboard be up in Windsor when it represents a terrorist organization which is banned under the laws of Canada?"Located at the southwest corner of Marion Avenue and Wyandotte Street East, the billboard does not mention Hezbollah by name, but features a central image of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the controversial political and military group. . . .Kessler said he feels Nasrallah represents "the opposite of peace. It should be offensive to all people living in Windsor. It should be offensive not only to the Jewish community, but to any Canadian."Emile Nabbout, president of the Windsor branch of the Lebanese Christian political group Kataeb, said he also thinks Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and he feels the billboard creates a misconception of the views of Windsor's Lebanese community."We really are not in support or in favour of that billboard and it should be removed ASAP," Nabbout said. . . . "By just analyzing the picture, there is no doubt in my mind this is a Hezbollah activity," he added.Printed in English on the left side of the billboard are the words: "Lebanese and Arab communities in Windsor city congratulate the Lebanese people for their steadfastness and endeavor to establish peace in Lebanon."But Nabbout said that Arabic writing which appears on the right side of the billboard does not match the English translation. According to Nabbout, the Arabic writing makes a reference to fighting."What they mean by 'fight' is basically 'guerrilla' -- using arms and weapons," Nabbout said. "Basically, there is a very specific word... That is a definite difference between the Arabic and the English."Contacted on Friday night, Mayor Eddie Francis said he was made aware of the billboard earlier in the day. Asked if he is concerned about its presence, Francis said: "The politics of Lebanon belong in Lebanon, not on the streets of Windsor."Francis said he has no idea who was responsible for the billboard, but the city is now looking into whether its content violates any rules. . . .According to [Muslim Windsor resident Sam] Ali, the accusations that Hezbollah is terrorist are untrue. "Hezbollah is freedom fighting. Whoever calls them terrorist is a liar," he said. . . .Fellow Lebanese native and Muslim Ghina Maawie said she doesn't understand why anyone would be offended by the billboard. "When I saw it, I felt so happy and so proud of it," she said.=====================

In what has become practically a routine, whenever bad publicity for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) surfaces, in an almost Pavlovian response, the New York Times leaps to its defense.

As I wrote about last March in The New Republic, when CAIR had befallen several embarrassing public setbacks, including the rescinding of an award from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office and public opposition on Capitol Hill for the use of a room to host a CAIR event, the Times dispatched its reporter, Neil MacFarquhar, to resuscitate CAIR’s image.

And now that CAIR has been named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Hamas fundraising trial against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), and copious amounts of evidence linking CAIR to both Hamas itself and the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood have been reported, MacFarquhar and the Times are at it again, printing an article (Muslim Groups Oppose a List of ‘Co-Conspirators’) that may as well be a CAIR press release. In fact, this “story” was spurred by CAIR’s announcement that the organization had filed an “amicus” brief in the HLF trial, seeking to remove itself from the list of un-indicted co-conspirators, and folded into its press release to shore up CAIR’s ridiculous – yet typical – persecution fantasy.

Meanwhile, the Times has done virtually no reporting whatsoever since the trial began one month ago, save one MacFarquhar piece during jury selection (which I wrote about at the time), another piece of CAIR-esque propaganda:

In today’s New York Times, Neil MacFarquhar, parroting the tactic of Islamist organizations like CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), pretends to speak for all American Muslims, writing:For American Muslims, whose religion stipulates that they give 2.5 percent of their annual income to charity, the shuttering of so many of their organizations without a hearing smacks of discrimination.No attempt is even made to qualify that statement with a “some," "many" or even a "most” – apparently MacFarquhar knows how all American Muslims feel. Much of his article serves as apologia for the defendants, as well.Yet again, when given an opportunity to report on CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad being officially placed by the FBI at the notorious 1993 Philadelphia meeting of Hamas activists and supporters, or the fact that there is documentary evidence consisting of official Muslim Brotherhood manifestoes from the trial directly linking CAIR with other noted American-based Hamas-front groups such as the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), the Times completely ignores the evidence and is nowhere to be seen.But when CAIR claims that the U.S. government is involved in a long-ranging conspiracy for the purposes of the “demonization of all things Muslim,” (emphasis added) then MacFarquhar and the Times are right there to serve as CAIR’s unofficial mouthpiece. As far as the Times’ readers are concerned, the free pass given to one of the most controversial and dangerous organizations in America continues unfettered. And despite the mounting and damning evidence coming to light due to the HLF trial, coupled with the already long, troubling and well known history of radicalism, anti-Americanism and virulent anti-Semitism espoused by CAIR officials, no doubt America’s “paper of record” will continue to run cover for them for a long time to come.

Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)Seattle Post-Intelligencer Offers Haiku Contest - But No Help - in FBI Terror Probe

By Bill HobbsCreated 2007-08-21 20:18The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is refusing to run the photos of two men the FBI is seeking to question in connection with suspicious behavior aboard a Puget Sound ferry - behavior that could be a precursor to a terror plot, or could be nothing nefarious at all.

The Seattle PI reports the story here [1] and explains its rationalization for not publishing the photos here [2]. And - in a steller example of complete touchy-feely uselessness - the paper is holding a haiku-writing contest [3] for readers to write about how they feel about the FBI alert and the way the paper handled it.

From the report:

The FBI is asking the public for help in identifying two men who were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries. About four weeks ago, the FBI fielded several reports from passengers and ferry workers about the men, who seemed "overly interested in the workings and layouts of the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.

The FBI also publicized photos of the men, which were taken by a ferry employee, Burroughs said. The Seattle P-I is not publishing the photos because neither man is considered a suspect nor has either been charged with a crime.

Ferry security is hugely important. So are civil liberties and privacy.

The P-I last year reported that according to a Justice Department inspector general's assessment, Puget Sound's ferries were the nation's No. 1 target for maritime terrorism.

This may well be a case of alert citizens spotting a very real threat. But running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least.

Yeah. Of course it would be easier to find out which is the case if the FBI could find the guys. And it would be easier to find the guys if the Seattle P-I would publish the photos, so that Seattle-area residents would know what the men look like whom the FBI has asked the public to help them find. As it stands now, in the name of being politically correct, the Seattle P-I has decided to alarm the people of Seattle and leave them looking suspiciously at just about anyone who fits the general description of male and looking like they might be from the Middle East.

Besides, while McCumber raises the flag of "civil liberties and privacy," the men in the photo were photographed in public while on a public ferry.

There is no invasion of their privacy, nor of their civil liberties, by publishing the photos so that the authorities can locate and speak with the men.

Disagree with me on that? Consider this: If Managing Editor McCumber needed art to illustrate a story on the region's ferry system, he could and likely would dispatch a Seattle P-I photographer to one of the ferries, and publish a shot of random ferry passengers on the deck of the boat. The paper might not even bother to identify the people in the photo.

Newspapers publish crowd shots taken in public all the time without identifying the people in the photo or asking if they mind having their photo published - or knowing if they are or are not involved in some sort of criminal activity.

McCumber's excuse for not running the photos is ... beyond weak. It is a figleaf for political correctness run amok, political correctness that may compromise the security of the people of the Seattle area that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ostensibly exists to serve.

Politeness causes me to refrain from suggesting the editors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer must be smoking something [4].

The good news: The P-I's decision to not run the photos is fueling widespread distribution of the photos in the blogosphere.

No word yet on how the Seattle Times is going to handle the FBI's request - the most recent story in the Seattle Times that seems relevant was this story [5] published August 3.

Here's more from the Jawa Report [6]. Also, the blogger at The View From Out Here, comments [7], "If we don’t know what they look like then how can we identify them? If you think they are just tourists, did you ever, on vacation, take pictures of a restricted area on a boat and tried to measure the size of the boat?"

No.

The P-I should put the security of its community ahead of the desire to not hurt some folks' [8] feelings.

Update: Michelle Malkin's excellent post [9] on the Seattle ferry story reminds us of the the Seattle Times' investigation in 2004 on reports on jihadi probing of the ferry system [10].

Update: A commenter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's website notes how out of touch with reality the editors of that paper are about the new media world in which they now operate.

It's amazing to me to think that, in this internet era, the [paper] is arrogant enough to think that they can 'hide' something from the public. By not publishing the pictures, they are making themselves less relevant - additionally, through the controversy, they are making the story bigger than it would be otherwise. This is a perfect example of why newspapers, and big media in general, is losing readers by the thousands.

Neither the Seattle Post-Intelligencer nor the rival Seattle Times is the gatekeeper of information in the greater Seattle area anymore, if they ever were. Neither are any of the local TV news stations. There are just so many news outlets and distributors now - cable networks, websites of out-of-town papers, and blogs - that no matter what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did, the people of Seattle were going to see these photos.

Thus, their decision to not publish the photos does not in any way accomplish the goal that drove that decision, while simultaneously showing the people of Seattle that the paper will put political correctness ahead of the security of thousands of Seattle-area ferry commuters - and demonstrating its increasing irrelevance in the broad and varied new-media landscape.

[edit] BiographyShortly after her birth in London, her British mother Patricia, and her father Mohammed, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehran. The Amanpours led a privileged life under the regime of the Shah of Iran.[citation needed] At age 11, she returned to England to attend first the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire, England, and then the New Hall School, an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school. Her family had to flee Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Amanpour moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island. During her time at URI she worked in the News Department at WBRU-FM Providence.

After graduation, she worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island as an electronic graphics designer.[1] In 1983, she was hired by CNN. In 1989, she was posted to Frankfurt, Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. However, it was her coverage of the Persian Gulf War that followed Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990 that made her famous. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones. Her emotional delivery from Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo led some viewers and critics to question her professional objectivity, to which she replied, "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."[2]

From 1996-2005, she contracted with CBS to file four to five in-depth, international news reports a year as a special contributor on that network's newsmagazine program, 60 Minutes. These reports garnered a Peabody Award in 1998, adding to the Peabody she was awarded in 1993.

In 1993, she was also awarded the George Polk Award for Television Reporting. Again in 1996 she, along with Anita Pratap, received the George Polk Award for Foreign Television Reporting for their story "Battle for Afghanistan," which aired on CNN.

Based out of CNN's London bureau, Amanpour is one of the most recognized international correspondents on American television. Her willingness to work in dangerous conflict zones has reportedly made her one of the more highly (if not the highest) paid field reporters in the world. She speaks English, Persian, and French fluently. Forbes magazine has named her one of the 100 Most Powerful Women.

She has had many memorable moments in her career, one of them being a telephone interview with Yasser Arafat during the siege on his compound in March 2002, during which Chairman Arafat hung up on her.[1] Another was landing the first and only post-election interview of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a Western journalist in 2005, despite some trepidation that this strident disciple of the now deceased Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would raise the issue of the Amanpour family's ties to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was deposed by a revolution led by Khomeini with Ahmadinejad's active involvement. The interview came off without a hitch.

She received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in 2006 for her contributions to journalism.

GM, I read the article twice. I see no apolgy for terrorists there. In fact she refers to Hammas as radical and states that they have launched suicide attacks on Israel.She does state that Gaza is some of the most poverty stricken shes ever seen. I don't doubt that statement.She does make the statetment that Hamas has little chance of making things better for its people because of the cut off of aid by the U.S. ,that also is true.I don't actually view it as an apology...though I can kinda see how you may feel this way(a bit of a stretch in my opinon)I do hear her saying that without U.S. funding Hammas cannnot provide for its own.My thought there is even terrorists would like to be able to care for its people. Got anything else?I am listening......I'am naive to all the evils of our mainstream reporters..... TG

You would think that after more than 50 years of one of the most intimately chronicled conflicts in human history -- Israelis vs. Palestinians -- there would be nothing new to say, no surprises. You would be wrong.

Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that has launched suicide attacks in Israel, won the Palestinian elections in January, thereby creating two firsts:

1. The first time a regime has changed in the Arab world democratically through elections;

2. The first time an Islamist group has come to power through elections.

Hamas gained support among Palestinians through two decades of building an effective and affordable social welfare system in Gaza. It runs most of the kindergartens, funds health clinics, provides welfare checks to widows and orphans, and yes, even stages mass weddings to help unemployed young men get married.

During this year's election, Palestinians fed up with the rampant corruption and lawlessness of the late Yasser Arafat's government turned to the only alternative, Hamas.

So when people ask: "Why did the Palestinian people elect a terrorist group?" The answer is because they see them as a lifeline.

Each time I go to the Palestinian territory of Gaza, I am shocked by the reality on the ground. On a recent visit, I passed through a short tunnel from the First World in Israel and emerged into the Third World that is Gaza. The poverty there is among the worst in the world.

Hamas officials told me they did not expect to win the election as overwhelmingly as they did. They say their main priority now is to meet the demands of the people for a better life.

But that may be impossible, because Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Hamas and have already cut funding to the new Palestinian government.

Posted By Christiane Amanpour, CNN Correspondent: 11:03 AM ET

****Normally, you'd have to buy an infomercial to get spin this good, unless of course you're a terrorist group and it's a CNN "journalist".****

GM, Uh...... thats the same article you hyper linked in your previous post. All I get from the articel is it overstates the obvious.......Call it spin if you like.....but is there a particular part thats untrue? TG

Buzwardo, Feel free to answer my question as to weather or not the article states ANY LIES, untruths.......I for one believe Hammas to be a terrorist organization.... GEEZ hopefully she didn't have to scream that in your face. ( politicaly correct?) She may get future interviews because of this....?she does get more access than a lot of reporters.

However, believe it or not....not everyone totally agrees with or sides with the jews. (Even here in God'country U.S.A.)I for one do. I also can read through the article and understand "the spin"So are you assuming that shes trying to mind bend people by wording a article a particular way........SINSTER.....will it ever stop. Then again........Of course we also know that Hammas has been a terrorist organization for a LONG time now........however we just in the last YEAR or so stopped sending aid to the palistinians I guess it was ok to send aid........until now?I wish I had more time to compose this....just don't hopefully I this makes sense and you won't need your spoon.

Speaking for myself, I have seen various reports by CA wherein in my opinion she left out pertinent facts so as to skew what the viewer would take away from the piece. I rarely watch CNN (e.g. when trapped into it while down in Peru) and no I can't quote the specific piece or subject, but I do know that I filed her under the heading of "misleading, probably deliberately so"-- not exactly solid proof I know, but OTOH I don't find her worth my time to accumulate the evidence and make the case.

TAC,Marc

PS: Buz, Tom: A gentle tug on the leash to keep the tenor of the conversation in tune with the harmonics of the "friends at the end of the day" code around here please.

GM, Truthfully, I do not know the connection between Hamas and the Muslim brotherhood......Iam intrested to hear. I don't make any claims to know more than the average Joe and the mideast is a complicated Zoo.

Guro Crafty, I do also understand what your saying and beleive it to be true. I did watch the CNN show last night Muslim warriors and thought it to be a little on the sympathetically, skewed side. I was not overly impressed.

Buzwardo can shuck insult to me all he wishes thats fine......Truth be....I do know the facts about the article posted by GM written by CA......I'am also well aware of how it was/is worded and how it sounds......but truth is the articlle may be slanted but it is not untrue.....pretty sure if it were.......some of our resident brain surgeons would have pointed it out to me rather than post nothingness. That option is still there.

Guro Crafty knows me hopefully well enough to know that just because I have taken up a position.....its not predominatly one I believe.The thing with me is I want to also know how other people think rather than take my stance and stand soley on that.Thats kinda how I try to maintain balance.......From time to time I play devils advocate to provoke what I beielve to be educated conversation.This forum IS one that gives good views and has a very solid knowledge base.......and just for the record......I consider myself a pretty conservative right winger.......(with balance) Take it for what its worth. TG

On October 28, 2005,[1] President George W. Bush denounced IslamoFascist movements that call for a “violent and political vision: the establishment, by terrorism, subversion and insurgency, of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom.”

The Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimun)[2] also known as the Ikhwan is a good example of what the President described and what he must protect us against.

The Muslim Brotherhood (“MB”) organization describes itself as a political and social revolutionary movement; it was founded in March 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, who objected to Western influence and called for return to an original Islam.[3]

The Brotherhood is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would isolate women and punish nonbelievers. Its members and supporters founded al Qaeda, as well as one “of the largest college student groups in the United States.”[4]

The Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism, Juan Zarate, stated recently, “the Muslim Brotherhood is a group that worries us not because it deals with philosophical or ideological ideas but because it defends the use of violence against civilians.”[5] In fact, The MB 1982 secret plan, (the Project) recently exposed, instructs all members locally and globally “To channel thought, education and action in order to establish an Islamic power [government] on the earth.” [6]

The Muslim Brotherhood has historically and continues to actively pursue the establishment of a Muslim regime that will serve as the basis to re-establish the Caliphate, not only by defending violence against civilians, The current leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Mahdi Akef,[7] “recently issued a new strategy calling on all its member organizations to serve its global agenda of defeating the West. He called on individual members of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide to not only join the “resistance” to the U.S. financially, but also through active participation.”[8] In the MB Project (1982), Point of Departure[9] instructs members,” To use diverse and varied surveillance systems, in several places, to gather information and adopt a single effective warning system serving the worldwide Islamic movement. In fact, surveillance, policy decisions and effective communications complement each other.”

In an interview to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat,[10] an international Arab newspaper on December 11, 2005, Akef stated that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a global movement whose members cooperate with each other throughout the world, based on the same religious worldview - the spread of Islam, until it rules the world.”

To that end, Akef said, “the Muslim Brotherhood… are an all-encompassing Islamic organization, calling to the adoption of the great religion that Allah gave in his mercy to humanity.” Meanwhile, according to its leader, the MB is busily cementing its ties: “We are in the global arena, and we preach for Allah according to the guidelines of the Muslim Brotherhood. All the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the international arena operate according to the written charter that states that Jihad is the only way to achieve these goals[11]. “Ours is the largest organization in the world,” he said.

Akef emphasized, “A Muslim in the international arena, who believes in the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood is considered part of us and we are considered part of him[12].”

In earlier interviews, ‘Akef called the U.S. “a Satan that abuses the religion.” He said: “I expect America to collapse soon,” declaring, “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America[13].” Although U.S. observers often view the Muslim Brotherhood as well as Hamas as less violent than al-Qaeda, the Brotherhood has long been actively supporting global jihadi efforts. “Prior to the U.S.-led attack on the Taliban regime, the Muslim Brotherhood actually had training camps in Afghanistan where it worked with Kashmiri militants and sought to expand its influence in Central Asian states, especially Tajikistan.”[14]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Muslim Brotherhood reacted to Hamas’ January 2006 electoral victory as not merely as a local achievement, but “a victory of the Islamic nation in its entirety,[15]” and as an expression of the concept that “the path of Islam is the true solution.”

As the parent of all Sunni and many other Islamist terrorist groups, the MB, to deflect attention, uses its long-term strategy, known as “flexibility”[16] (muruna[17] in Arabic). This chameleon-like adaptation is tactical moderation with the ultimate objective of complete Islamization of society.[18] Indeed, the MB’s 1982 project calls on members “To reconcile international engagement with flexibility at a local level.”[19]

Today, when the West focuses on Islamist terrorism, the MB usually refrains from publicly advocating violence. The MB’s 1982 Project, calls on its members “To master the art of the possible on a temporary basis without abusing the basic [Islamic] principles… we should not look for confrontation with our adversaries, at the local or the global scale, which would be disproportionate and could lead to attacks against the dawa or its disciples.”[20]

As stated on its charter and its website, the MB seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire, a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize [21] targeted nations by whatever means available.

A principal danger of MB activities is that they are hidden behind “religious” ideology. Moreover, this ideology dictates concealment (Kitman).[22] In fact saying, “we should keep hush-hush on things that are still in preparation.” This ideology controls every aspect of life and seeks to impose that control on everyone.

In the end, the MB intends to overthrow all secular governments and impose Islamic law (Shari’a) worldwide, and it is diligently pursuing this goal. In July 2005, former Kuwaiti minister of education Dr. Ahmad Al-Rab'i,[23] wrote in the Arabic London daily, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: "The beginnings of all of the religious terrorism that we are witnessing today were in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology." Thus, on its website,[24] the MB advocates, “Establishing the Islamic government.”

“Building the Muslim state…Building the Khilafa…Mastering the world with Islam,”[25]; however, would necessarily deprive Americans of their First Amendment, rights.[26] The first clause in the Amendment states there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The First Amendment also upholds an individuals’ right to religious freedom. But as determined by its doctrine, the MB would exploit that right—along with First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly—to actively seek the imposition of laws that would deny religious freedom to everyone else.

Moreover, the MB guiding principles celebrate its major [and continuing] role in the struggle to liberate Muslims lands. The ikhwan's bravery in the 1948 Palestine war has been recorded by all sides. The total number of volunteers from the ikhwan in 1948 numbered 10,000 from Egypt, Syria and other countries. In addition to participating in the battle to liberate Palestine, they served to raise the consciousness of Muslims all over the Islamic World and restore to them the spirit of struggle and dignity. The ikhwan have played a role in liberating Muslim lands from colonialist powers in almost every Muslim country. The ikhwan were active amongst Muslims in Central Asian Muslim republics since the '70s, and their involvement can be seen recently in such republics as Tajikistan. More recently they had a major role in the struggle for Afghanistan and Kashmir[27].

Clearly, the MB strives for Muslim supremacy, often violently.

The MB’s readiness to use violence was demonstrated in the U.S., in 1993 with the bombing the World trade Center in NYC. Exiled MB leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in U.S. prison for plotting this attack, also planned to blow up bridges and tunnels in Manhattan.[28] Since then, the MB affiliated groups in the U.S., focused their activities and agenda to condition American minds and behavior to create an Islamic foundation from which violence can spring when the time is right.

And future violence is all but guaranteed: In 2004, MB leader Mohammad Mahdi Akef publicly promoted “Palestinian and Iraqi suicide bombers, called for the destruction of Israel and asserted that the United States has no proof that Al Qaeda was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.”[29]

Actively promoting its radical religious ideology, the MB may well meet the definition of a “terrorist organization,” under the Patriot Act, even though it has not been so designated by the U.S. government. The law stipulates “terrorist organizations to potentially include terrorist organizations not designated by the Secretary of State …A group that is engaged in terrorist activities might not be designated as a terrorist organization because, inter alia, the group’s activities escape the notice of U.S. officials responsible for designated organizations as terrorist; the group has shifting alliances; or designating the group as a terrorist organization would jeopardize ongoing U.S. criminal or military operations”. [30]

Terrorist organizations are legally defined as groups of two or more individuals that have “committed, incited, planned, prepared, gathered information or provided material support for terrorist activities.” However, terrorist activity can in some instances include even “indirect” actions such as group membership and advocacy. [31]

In addition, the REAL ID Act of 2005 significantly expanded the legal definition “terrorist organization” as it pertains to U.S. immigration law. “Terrorist organizations” now include any group that solicit funds or memberships for either terrorist organizations or activities, or otherwise provide them material support. The definition now covers groups with subgroups engaged in terrorist activities, too. [32]As we discuss below, the MB has many such subgroups and has spawned many offspring— thus the MB and all its offspring now seem to fit these legal criteria.

The definition of “engaged in terrorist activity” was also broadened under the Real ID Act, to include belonging to, associating with, soliciting or recruiting for, or giving material support to a terrorist organization or even a single member, including non-designated terrorist organizations. Furthermore, if they so claim, the burden is now on aliens to prove that they could not reasonably have known that their actions supported a terrorist group. [33]

The Caricatures Riots

The riots following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in the then obscure Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten, [34] in September 2005, should have surprised no one. In fact, the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe, in line with the MB agenda, were planted long before the cartoons were published.

In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and leader of Hizb ut Tahrir (a radical group that works to establish the Caliphate), Sheikh Issam Amayra, from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, called upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war, according to his sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.

Amayra’s sermon warned that: “…the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”

Amayra continued, “Afterwards the citizens of the Caliphate (which will be raised in Denmark) will wage war on Oslo, and after they change that city’s name to Medina [for the Arabian holy city] they will fight their neighboring Scandinavian countries in order to join their lands to the territory of the Caliphate. In the next stage, they will wage a holy war and spread the message of Islam to the rest of Europe, until they reach the original city of Medina. Then they will join both cities under the banner of Islam.”

Clearly, the riots in Denmark and throughout the world were not spontaneous, but planned and organized well in advance[35] by Islamist organizations that support the MB, and with funding mostly from Saudi Arabia.[36]

The MB and its offspring organizations employ the Flexibility strategy in the U.S. and wherever they operate. This strategy calls for a minority group of Muslims to use all “legal” means to infiltrate majority-dominated, non-Muslim secular and religious institutions, starting with its universities. As a result, “Islamized” Muslim and non-Muslim university graduates enter the nation’s workforce, including its government and civil service sectors, where they are poised to subvert U.S. law enforcement agencies, intelligence communities, military branches, foreign services, and financial institutions.

Congressional plans to outlaw material support for designated terrorist groups and their leaders in 1996 caused a stir for leaders of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), evidence released Wednesday shows.

The foundation and five of its officials are on trial for violating that law, as they stand accused of providing material support to Hamas. In a telephone call intercepted by FBI agents under a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, HLF founder Shukri Abu Baker discusses the legislation with HLF officer and fellow defendant Ghassan Elashi and an associate named Thomas Mohamed. “Up to this point,” Baker said, “the law differentiates between…for example the charitable and let’s say military wings of any organization…But after this passes, it will be the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re supporting charitable. It’s the same as long as that organization is named a terrorist organization.”

The defense insists it raised money solely to feed and care for needy Palestinian families and did not work in league with Hamas. The media, Baker said in the 1996 call, “is going out of its way to establish a link…between the Holy Land Foundation and, and, and other organizations. So this is not for nonsense. There is a purpose.” The media, in this case, is the Dallas Morning News and IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson. Morning News reporter Gayle Reaves had interviewed Baker two weeks earlier.

Other evidence released in the trial shows HLF repeatedly turned to Hamas members and affiliates for fundraisers. Its officials attended a secret 1993 meeting of Hamas members and sympathizers in Philadelphia to discuss ways to derail the new Oslo Peace Accords. And documents seized from HLF offices and other defendants show HLF and other U.S.-based Muslim groups were part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. Hamas is a Brotherhood offshoot.

But Baker and his HLF associates weren’t going to tell Reaves that. Baker briefed El-Mezain about Reaves’ questions in a call two days after her interview. They agreed that El-Mezain wouldn’t talk to Reaves:

“Tell her, ‘I called him and he is not scared of you,’” El-Mezain instructed, “‘but he has no time to see you.’”

Something else El-Mezain said in that call is revealing: “Tell her…I mean, regarding donations to Hamas at the time were not illegal. Also, in truth, they are an honor to the entire Palestinian people in the first place.”

Other testimony Wednesday from FBI Special Agent Robert Miranda focused on HLF’s efforts to protect its cover.

In July 2000 Baker hired a private investigator to check HLF office for bugs or other forms of surveillance. “The Basic RF Counter-Surveillance Sweep determined that certain aspects within the facility, and therefore the Foundation, have been under technical surveillance by unknown entities, for an undetermined period of time. At the time of the sweep, certain recommendations were made regarding these findings, as well as some general suggestions,” wrote Shihan Hale, president and CEO of the Executive Protection Group, Inc. in Dallas.

Hale offered a second title under his signature, that of Regional Director of Security for the Muslim American Society (MAS).

Evidence previously admitted in the trial shows MAS tasked as part of a “Confrontation Work Plan” in the agenda of a July 30, 1994 meeting of the Palestine Committee. “The activation of the role of MAS” is called upon “to educate the brothers in all work centers, mosques and organizations on the necessity of stopping any contacts with the Zionist organizations and the rejection of any future contacts…”

Court was dismissed early today and will resume Monday.

By The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) on August 23, 2007 10:15 AM

Ya know Tom, if you think those are insults you really don't want to get next to me when I'm flinging food around a kitchen. Drill Instructors are dilettantes who stop by during the dinner rush to see how it's really done, and usually leave crying. Consider my recent mewlings the written equivalent of Edvard Munches "The Scream."

Cognitive dissonance does that to me.

As for why I've failed to answer the "why is water wet" kinds of questions you've been posting, the answer is because doing so provides nothing of value to me. I've done my share of circular dances with clumsy rhetoricians here and elsewhere; laps around those tracks have never brought me anything but increasing horror with the tenacity some people bring to beliefs they are utterly unable to support in a reasoned manner. If you are indeed playing the foil I'm afraid it's a tin foil and the resulting amorphous lump of crinkled questions does nothing for me but inspire a shake of the head.

A wholly superflous aside: while pulling up an image of "The Scream" I noted that it's subtitled "disambiguation." I think I've found my next screen name. . . .

1) Concerning money to the Palestinians before and not now: Before the govt. was the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords. The Hamas is a terrorist organization which rejects the Oslo Accords, so when it was elected, the flow of money was cut off. Pretty simple actually. Many criticized Bush for foolishly encouraging democracy and pointed to Hamas's election, whereas I found its election to pierce the veil of the illusion that the Palestinian's wanted peace with Israel and allowed us to shut off the money flow.

2) May I suggest if you want to do a devil's advocate bit again that you state in advance that you are playing devil's advocate?

Guro Crafty, I don't intend to beat this into the ground but.......My feeling is...When the the Palestinian gov. was the PLO...Hammas was its gaurd dog.......and most often left off leash, and ran loose unrestrained. We may have from time to time put up a feeble protest...which mostly went unheard by the PLO.I think it wrong to assert that it was ok to fund the PLO just because they signed the Oslo accords.....but I do understand that When Palestine showed its true colors by voting in Hammas it gave us a easy out on funding the Palestinians. TGKinda the baisis of my orginal argument towards the CNN/ CA article.....

Well no argument from me if you are saying that Arafat, may he rot in hell, was a lying, murdering, scum bag. And no argument from me if you say that the US should never have supported him-- but this belongs in a different thread.

Christiane Amanpour has at least one parent who was part of what one would have hoped to describe as the intelligent secular ancien regime. They were the people pushed out by Khomeini and his epigones, and therefore, one would have thought, comprehending the nature of Islam. Well, it turns out that not everyone who has fled Iran quite has that necessary understanding. Some like to pretend that Khomeini is a sport, when the real sport was the Shah and his father, in their de-emphasis on Islam, their emphasis on the pre-Islamic past of Iran, and their willingness to limit the power of the mullahs -- and, above all, to give the non-Muslims of Iran, the Christians, Jews, and Baha'is, reasonable security and even something akin to legal equality.

But Amanpour does not realize that. Nor, in her aggressive climb through the media ranks, has she stopped to study Islam. She has not stopped to find out what happened to the Zoroastrians or what happens to them in Iran today. She has not stopped to find out why, even in the 20th century, a Jew could be killed for going out in the rain (where a drop might ricochet off him and hit an innocent Muslim with this raindrop of najis-ness, thus contaminating him).

She might, that is, have begun with the history of Islam in Iran and considered the treatment of non-Muslims, and how Shah Abbas II overnight ordered the conversion of all the Jews and Armenians in an Iranian city (possibly Tabriz), and why the real, as opposed to the Iranian exile's dreamy fictional history of Iran, is full of such episodes. She might have gotten hold of E. J. Browne's work on Persian literature, and studied Hafiz and Sa'adi. She might have read Omar Khayyam, and come to realize just how un-Islamic he was. She might have read the Shahnameh of Firdowsi, and seen how his literary talent was put to work preventing the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs from successfully coming to damage and then overwhelm the Iranian culture. She might have done a special program on Islam as a vehicle of Arab cultural and linguistic imperialism, and used Iran as an example of one place where it did not succeed as it did elsewhere.

Oh, there are many things that raw-boned massive Christiane Amanpour might have done, if she had allowed herself the leisure to think, and be something more than one more media star, one more mere reporter incapable of making sense of what she reports on.

But she did none of it. She clawed and clawed to the top. She entered into a mariage blanc, a white marriage of grayish convenience, with James Rubin. She travels, she reports from here, she reports from there. She is like so many of them, with their fabulous salaries, their baseless self-assurance, their inability to convey anything difficult, anything that requires instructing us rather than feeding us visual and verbal pablum.

If you have seen the presentation of those "Christian fundamentalists" (read: Fanatics), then you will observe how carefully the cameramen have captured those flags, and taken shots of hands uplifted in prayer or hallelujahs to make sure the viewer gets the impression of a Nuremberg rally, with these "Christians" heil-hitlering all over the place. Very carefully done, very artfully and deliberately done. She, Christiane Amanpour, is of course determined to make this group of Christians look as bad as possible, and then to convince us that they represent a huge number of people, and to do the same, when their time comes, to those wild-eyed fanatical Jews, those "Biblical settlers" who think -- imagine that! -- that the Land of Israel, that gigantic land, practically the size of Connecticut or is it Massachusetts, was given in a Covenant to the Jews. What a terrible thing, what a thing so utterly comparable, is it not, to the view in Islam that the entire world belongs to Muslims, and that they must by right dominate everywhere?

Do you see a little something not quite symmetrical in her view, in her presentation, or that of her crew, so willing to play ball? Meanwhile, one wonders how she can stand herself. And why CNN so obviously insults us, in reducing the menace of Islam, the menace that only a fool could ignore, and the full scope of which, based on immutable texts, becomes clearer to the intelligent every day, to something like the non-existent menace from those wild-eyed Nurembergian Christians, with Amanpour as their recording Riefenstahl, or those crazy "West Bank" settlers, in their trailers, choosing to live among a million Arabs -- "Palestinians" -- who of course have every right to be there, because...well, isn't the Middle East the same thing as the Arab World, after all? Where do those pesky remnants of Jews, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Copts, Maronites, Mandeans, Yazidis, Armenians, and all the others come from? Why don't they go back where they came from? The "Arab World," the "Muslim Arab World" -- now that's more like it. That's just the ticket.

Because, you see, Every Group Has Its Crazies. And those crazies, you see, are exactly alike, in what they want, and how they act, and the size of the demands they make on the rest of us. But exactly.

That's the point of this series. You didn't think there was another point, did you?

GM, Having watched 1.5 parts of the 3 part series (not able to stomache finishing the Christain part3) I find this article to be pretty much on the mark.The points of the article are well taken.I also thik this quote from SB-Mig to make good sense also....regarding a LOT off issues :

Quote

I have to admit that a truly objective film on the subject matter seems like an impossibility at this point in the game.

Unfortunatly I think there is no middle ground any longer.......Or objectivity. TG

A simple test for evaluating the impact of the fundamentalists of various religions: Body count. Compare and contrast those killed and wounded by the global jihad vs. the scary christians and jews. I don't know of any jews that have thrown acid into the face of people not keeping kosher and we haven't yet see a wave of fundie christian suicide bombing evolution classes, though i'm sure that's coming any day now....

You're not actually saying that Jews/Christians/Mormons/Hindus have never committed crimes against their own are you?

I agree that the use of violence by fundamentalists in Islam (aka Islamists, Jihadists) is doing a pretty good job of keeping the current body count high, but history (and fairly recent history at that) has plenty of examples of other fundamentalist/conservative/orthodox religions wreaking havoc on those with different belief systems. Or in some instances upon those in their own religious circle. I'm not condoning the behavior, but I am pointing out that everyone has done it at one time or other.

Now before this turns into a "they killed more than we did" or "yeah, but that was years ago" argument, how about we consider the inherent danger of any fundamentalist belief system? While Islamic fascism is indeed a threat, we are fighting it and for the time being, the "hand-to-hand" battle is centered in the Middle East. The hearts and minds battlefield is IMHO the more important one. How do we keep people from considering fanatical religious thought as a viable option? I'm pretty sure no one just walks down the street and suddenly thinks "Hmmm, I wanna kill me some Jews/Arabs/Christians/Muslims".

I think that fundamentalist thought of any kind is dangerous. Fundamentalist religions tend to work in one of two ways: in your face, or behind the scenes. I would even suggest that the latter, in the form of legislative changes, educational reforms, dictating lifestyle choices (and I'm talking about any number of countries here) is more dangerous than physical violence, as much of this happens "below the radar".

Everyone is capable of being an a*hole, we just happen to have a lot of them in particular religious garb these days.

As for "fundie christian suicide bombing", I would point to instances of violence like abortion clinic bombings, doctor killings, and attacks on synagogues by neo-nazis (usually under the guise of "true christians"). IMHO there are enough nutballs around to make trouble over issues as simple as evolutions classes..we just haven't seen it yet.

Given that there are roughly the same number of christians and muslims worldwide, please compare the body counts. If there are "dangerous fundies" in every religion, then there should be the roughly same amount of death and mayhem, right? So, in the last 6 months, year, 10 years, what's the christian body count vs. the muslim body count? Why the disparity?

I have trouble with zealots of every stripe, and have heard from far more bible thumping god-squaders that I'm going to burn in hell than I've heard from closet Marxists that I'm a judgmental paternalist who's existence is an affront to Mother Gaeia. With that said, there's a place for realistic risk assessment, and from that perspective I'm far more concerned about zealots of the Islamic stripe than just about any other flavor.

I agree that an argument about who's piled corpses highest is little likely to be productive, nor do I want to run laps slicing history into pogromic segments, but like most others I buy insurance for my car, house, health, etc., but don't by any against asteroid strikes, East coast earthquakes, big bursts of oceanic methane, mountaintop floods, and other events that are on the far edge of the geographic history horizon. Similarly in my soft target role as an ad hoc first responder I don't spend a lot of time worrying about homicidal Moonies or hostage taking Hasids, though there is a group of folks currently making a habit of blowing bystanders away that does enter into my thinking.

You want to argue big picture then yep, we could come up with a long list of savage bastards I'd have no problem tossing out the airlock. But if you're seeking to cast a benefit cost analysis of the current geopolitical scene then I think it makes more sense to focus on demonstrable threats rather than speculative boogiemen. If that's the yardstick then who is currently stacking American corpses the highest strikes me as a valid metric. I'll leave the relativistic hand wringing to those who have the leisure time for it.

So, in the last 6 months, year, 10 years, what's the christian body count vs. the muslim body count? Why the disparity?

Cuz it's not the good old days, and we didn't have the balls to ride into pakistan and drop a nuke...

All joking aside, I'm not saying that the chrisitan body count isn't higher, just that perhaps our approach to the problem shouldn't be strictly black and white.

Quote

I don't spend a lot of time worrying about homicidal Moonies or hostage taking Hasids

And what I'm saying is that perhaps we

Quote

should

spent a little bit of time paying attention to other branches of religion that are fanatic in their beliefs as well, because while the threat they pose is not as in your face, it has just as many societal repercussions. Am I concerned about Christian conservatives blowing me up? No. But I am concerned about them telling me how to live. Am I concerned about Hindus fighting Muslims in India, not so much...until someone decides to throw a nuke. Islam is in the forefront but let's not get tunnel vision.

The lack of "big picture" thinking as many call is what dragged us into this Iraqi boondoggle in the first place. Lack of foresight, unwillingness to change strategies, and just plain bullheadedness has made for disaster. I just think that it's about time we pay attention to the the entire forest, not just the tree in front of us.

So, on the media end of things, I would think that a piece on "God's Warriors" would try and point out the dangers of any religion's fanatical followers. I didn't watch it, so I don't know how it panned out.

"...there must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words.... I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace." - Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad

When I served as a Navy psychiatrist during the Vietnam War, one of my weekly duties was interviewing and assessing potential draftees who were seeking to avoid service by claiming mental illness. Many of these were recent Ivy League graduates, students of the humanities, who were active protesters of what they insisted was an immoral war. They thought of themselves as idealists.

Yet they were not principled conscientious objectors. Instead, they were glib, had read up on symptoms of psychosis, and could feign the manifest behavior of any disqualifying syndrome-including homosexuality. Their efforts to dissemble were usually rather obvious. They were predicated on the arrogant assumption that they were smarter than any military psychiatrist.

Once it was pointed out to them that if they avoided the draft, someone else, less educated and less favored by fortune would go in their place, they quickly revealed their true motivation: fear. I realized I was observing cowardice masquerading as idealism. These young men would do anything to avoid the risk of fighting and dying for their country.

I then would return to my hospital responsibilities, working with wounded vets. These were not glib wordsmiths. It took real effort to get them to talk about their experiences. They didn't think of their courage in battle as anything special. When they did talk about it, they often worried that they'd let down their comrades. The contrast with would-be draft evaders was striking. There was absolutely none of the self-preoccupation of the Ivy Leaguers. Instead these were men who had done deeds, fought battles, rescued other wounded platoon members, risked their lives. They readily acknowledged having been afraid, and many paid a high emotional price. They felt fear, but unlike our Ivy Leaguers, the force that propelled them was courage, not cowardice.

Over many years of clinical observation, I repeatedly confirmed the truth of Wordsworth's observation that "the child is father of the man". So who were these wordsmith cowards as children? In his great essay Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?, Robert Nozick pointed out that wordsmith intellectuals-writers, journalists, liberal arts professors, film makers, television pundits-had frequently been children who achieved success in school, based on their verbal skills. They were rewarded with elite status within the school system. As adults, however, they were not similarly rewarded. Capitalism rarely gives its greatest rewards to the verbally skilled. Nozick tried to sort out the puzzle, and concluded that it is our educational system, where, as he put it:

"...to the intellectually meritorious went the praise, the teacher's smiles, and the highest grades. In the currency the schools had to offer, the smartest constituted the upper class. Though not part of the official curricula, in the schools the intellectuals learned the lessons of their own greater value in comparison with the others, and of how this greater value entitled them to greater rewards. The wider market society, however, teaches a different lesson. The greatest rewards do not automatically go to the verbally brightest. Verbal skills are not most highly valued... Schooled in the lesson that they were most valuable, the most deserving of reward, the most entitled to reward, how could the intellectuals, by and large, fail to resent the capitalist society which deprived them of the just deserts to which their superiority "entitled" them? Is it surprising that what the schooled intellectuals felt for capitalist society was a deep and sullen animus that, although clothed with various publicly appropriate reasons, continued even when those particular reasons were shown to be inadequate?...The intellectual wants the whole society to be a school writ large, to be like the environment where he did so well and was so well appreciated. "As Eric Hoffer succinctly put it: "Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words."Nozick also observed that there is a childhood forerunner to capitalism -- the world of the playground. There, verbal intellect is far less important than action. On the playground aggression is as important as intellect. Being able to utilize aggression in the service of solving problems produces leaders not designated by authority figures, but by one's peers. Physical courage is valued highly. Cowards are mocked and shunned as "scaredy cats". Willingness to fight for oneself, without appealing to authority becomes a measure of status. It also provides real world lessons in human nature.

I recall trading blows to gain sufficient respect to be included in pick up schoolyard games. An Irish Catholic boy admired for his basketball skills joined my fight against the anti-Semites and insisted that anyone who could sink jump shots from 25 feet out could play on his team, even if he was a Jew. It took a few bloodied noses but the matter was finally settled. Gerry Paulson was our schoolyard Patton.

In that freewheeling world of the schoolyard, the good little girls and physically timid boys who craved teacher's praise were at a disadvantage. The schoolroom was their utopia, where physical aggression was banned and all problems had a verbal solution. Girls are usually more verbally adept in the early childhood years and gain surplus praise from teachers. In addition, such children, including boys who crave teacher's approval, receive moral approbation for being "good" while aggression is, "bad". Hence the future wordsmith intellectual grows up feeling smarter, morally superior, a caring idealist.

These self-flattering views carry over to adulthood, and shape the future wordsmith intellectuals' political views. If words can resolve all conflicts, then wordsmiths are exceedingly important. If conflicts within and between human beings can be "resolved" with words, then who better to play the role of savior than the wordsmith intellectual?

One of the central features of utopian politics, explaining their appeal to intellectuals, is the promise that conflict can be abolished and human nature fundamentally changed. Whether Communism, Nazism or Islamism, the aim is a unified, submissive, happy mankind led by an elite in possession of the truth, just like Miss Murphy when she taught 6th grade. Aggression will then vanish when egalitarian paradise prevails.

Since that happy day never arrives, scapegoats are needed to explain the failure of utopia whenever it is tried. Usually it's the Jews, but it can be other ‘infidels' as well. Thus the wordsmith intellectual can rationalize mass murder by a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot or Ahmadinejad, vicariously discharging his own repressed violent aggression, while still holding fast to an idealized self image.

Nozick's explanation for wordsmith intellectuals' opposition to capitalism is an important first order explanation, but it doesn't go deeply enough into the psychology of intellectuals.

Capitalism embraces competition and competition requires utilization of aggression. Profound fear of aggression, and the concomitant dislike of action to solve problems, constitutes the underlying reason for the loathing of capitalism. The schoolroom is a model for intellectual utopia. Utopia is, above all, a conflict-free zone wherein no one is aggrieved. Whatever social problems exist can be talked out. Intellectuals and their verbal skills can show the way to harmony and peace. Having avoided aggression at an early age, these wordsmiths never learned Patton's lessons in courage. Cowardice is therefore the reaction that comes most readily in situations of danger.

As a psychoanalyst I belong to a wordsmith profession, of course, and I have a close-up view of its practitioners. They are overwhelmingly left in their politics and tend to think words are the answer to all serious problems. Their faith in the power of words to resolve conflict is almost absolute. When psychoanalysis came to America it shed its European pessimism about human nature in adapting to New World optimism. Therapy changed its goals from Freud's limited aim of converting misery into ordinary human unhappiness. It decided, in the cant phrase that rules to this day, that mental "conflict can be resolved", i.e. done away with, and blissful happiness can then prevail. This became the task of individual psychotherapy-to resolve intrapsychic conflict, and then the aim was extended to include group social conflicts.

We are drowning in a therapeutic culture, saturated by a fantasy version of human nature in stark contradiction to the original psychoanalytic view, a view much closer to the stoics and St. Augustine than to Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately for the adherents of the therapeutic culture, conflict can never be ‘resolved', and they are doomed to disappointment. Never mind, there will be another self help guru next week.

The human mind, however, is in conflict as long as it is alive.

Conflict between wishes, fears, moral prohibitions, and demands of reality never go away. The ways of handling conflict can change, with very hard and prolonged work, but that is a far more modest and realistic goal than the utopian one of transforming human nature implicit in the notion that mental conflict can be resolved.

Changing entire societies is even more difficult. Contemporary psychotherapists, like other wordsmith intellectuals, endorse a Rousseau-ian ideal of human nature: innocent children are victimized by their parents, who are unwitting transmitters of capitalism's oppressive values to their offspring.

Many fine and noble efforts have been made to awaken the Western world to the mortal threat posed to its moral foundations and its very existence by militant Islam. The openly declared intentions of these enemies of Western civilization, accompanied by their daily deeds of mayhem, would seem to be enough to awaken us. Testimony by former adherents like the brave Walid Shoebat should sound an alarm that would wake the deepest sleeper.

Yet many in the Western world remain in a sound, politically correct, post-modern sleep. Why is this? When evidence is ignored, when savagery is blamed on provocation by its victims, when a Jew-hating death cult is described as a religion of peace, when media and governing elites see little difference between the firemen and the fire, there must be non-rational forces at play. Rational discussion doesn't always work because fear is great, terror has worked on many, and amongst the wordsmith elite, cowardice is the usual response.

Fear is, of course a universal response to danger. How a person handles fear varies widely, depending on early development. George Patton, in his famous D-Day speech said; ".. every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared."Fortunately, wordsmith intellectuals are not the majority of Americans. If you took the New York Times, our Ivy League faculties and the Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis as representative of the country, you would conclude we are a nation of castrati. Their screeching volubility notwithstanding, they are nevertheless the minority. I find it comforting, when the caterwauling of the left becomes deafening, to think of them as "the insects of the hour", in Edmund Burke's phrase. He wrote: "Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour."Rarely does one find a Churchill or a Patton, men of action who also are wordsmiths. It is unlikely that one will appear soon gain, so we will have to get through this war in defense of civilization by setting an example of courage and hoping that a few of the wordsmith intellectuals will be shamed into silence. After all, as Patton remarked: "...Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American..."

Am I concerned about Christian conservatives blowing me up? No. But I am concerned about them telling me how to live.

Well hey, then beware of the Greenies who want to carbon neutral your fanny back into a third world subsistence existence, too. Indeed, no bible thumper has ever come out of my bathroom and complained about the shampoo I use, given me grief about the way I separate my trash, lectured me about what food I eat and so on, but plenty on the left have. Bet you dimes to dollars you can't find a member of the god squad who cares about the size of your toilet tank, but members of the nanny state left have legislated that choice away for you.

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The lack of "big picture" thinking as many call is what dragged us into this Iraqi boondoggle in the first place. Lack of foresight, unwillingness to change strategies, and just plain bullheadedness has made for disaster. I just think that it's about time we pay attention to the the entire forest, not just the tree in front of us.

How's that any different from saying our failure to live a righteous life abiding by Jehovah's will has led to a sorry state of affairs? You call for a god-like omniscience while chastising those who believe there is such a thing. Has there ever been a war where foresight wasn't lacking, poor strategies weren't clung to, and obstinacy didn't complicate things? Sounds like the conflict you'd engage in is too antiseptic ever to occur.

When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said 9/11 happened because god stopped protecting America because of immorality the left mocked them. However Noam "Holocaust denier" Chomsky puts a hard leftist spin on the same concept and the secular leftists can't buy enough of his delusional scribblings.

Bet you dimes to dollars you can't find a member of the god squad who cares about the size of your toilet tank, but members of the nanny state left have legislated that choice away for you

But they do care about what my children study in school, what kind of lifestyle I lead, and who I can or can't marry. Again, while not a direct physical threat, one I consider just as disturbing.

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hard leftist spin on the same concept and the secular leftists can't buy enough of his delusional scribblings.

This isn't a discussion about left or right spin, it's a discussion about the dangers posed by religious fanatics. Which is why perhaps I should move it to another area?"

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Funny how dunking a crucifix in urine or smearing a picture of the virgin mary in elephant dung is applauded and covered by the MSM, but they get so timid about that one religion. Why is that?

Because the MSM has no balls.

Guys, I am talking about the dangers posed by religious fanatics, which correctly reported or not are worth careful consideration. The media's spin on fanaticism is deeply flawed, and I don't attempt to condone it. All I'm saying is that the issues raised/discussed are worth consideration regardless of the immediacy of the threat.

Guys, I am talking about the dangers posed by religious fanatics, which correctly reported or not are worth careful consideration.

Yeah, and I'm replying the ducks on the left with all their PC orthodoxies quack in a similar manner. Indeed, I think many of the left would be horrified to realize there's a strong Puritan streak ingrained in their ideology. I think that the underlying process is that a large segment of humanity is unable to deal with the ambiguity a vast and uncaring universe regularly reveals and hence casts about for gross simplifications that makes sense of it all (to them!). I don't care if it's Allah, Gaiea, Yaweh, animal spirits, Zoroaster, ganja, dialectic materialism, L. Ron Hubbard, Haile Selassie, Gog and Magog, ancestors, cows, earth spirits, or the pair of bunny slippers that speak to you from under the bed, if you are attempting to impose the fruit of your gross simplifications on me I don't have any use for you. Think trying to split off those who use similar processes but different bunny slippers is disingenuous at best.

Ah, and the secular left doesn't use the public schools and universities as indoctrination mechanisms, right? There's no one trying to impose an agenda on the schools, but the right, right?

I find the secular left's attempts to make societal changes just as reprehensible. One of my biggest pet peeves has been the creation of political correctness, and that's all about the Left.

However, I believe the religions covered in the CNN piece were Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The topic of discussion is the inherent danger of fanatics in each religion and there respective fields of focus. Muslims - Jihad. Fundamentalist Jews - Maintaining the State of Israel. Christians - Lifestyle/Societal changes. Each worthy of consideration regardless of what you may perceive to be their threat level. I still don't see the problem with long range, wide scope thinking, while taking direct action at the same time. The jihadis are obviously dangerous and that's why there's a war going on. But culture wars exist in our own society that most people are happy to ignore, which I find disturbin.

And, if you haven't noticed, there isn't a religion known as Secular Leftism...actually, there probably is one somewhere in Humboldt County

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Yeah, and I'm replying the ducks on the left with all their PC orthodoxies quack in a similar manner

Careful examination of all extremists/idealogues is important, religious or otherwise. I focus on the religious ones because they tend to try the hardest.

And, in doing so, bow before your bunny slippers while while making aghast noise about Christians and Jews who do the same.

If you're willing to let folks find their own path through the fog to any paradise or perdition that follows, support in no uncertain terms the fleeting phenomena known as freedom even in its distasteful manifestations, sort out differences in an empiric manner via informed debate, and can contend with omnipresent ambiguity without seeing what you seek in its cloud, then I've no issue with you. But if you're gonna curse the barbarians and their false gods while rubbing blue mud into your navel so that you can join your tribe at the inquisition, you are condemning what you partake of. That insular mindset has been the bane of humanity from its outset and leads to the sort of pigheaded buffoonery you've railed against elsewhere.

Bottom line is I've no qualms with your checklist, but ask if you should add yourself to it.

Buzwardo, Your last post was very elequently worded and quite cute.You do have quite a way with words. I'am quite a bit simplier and to the point....I see no need to drag out a message in a flowery vocab. Though I feel you think quite highley of yourself as is evident by your postings Which brings me to my point/ question........You seem to have no problem Bashing everyone under the sun and appear to stand for .......well....not much....or take no particular side.......that in its self is fairly safe....but anyway.....I'am just curious as to what Bunny slippers you bow to? I DO POSE THIS AS A SERIOUS QUESTION.Hopefully not self....that would be just sad.... TGGuro Crafty......no tempeture rising here .....Just trying to get a feel for a guy who appears to take no side.

As for why I should write down to you, how 'bout if you try to write up to me? Give that a shot and maybe we can meet in the middle at some point. Crafty clearly expressed his preference above; you might want to reread it in view of your attention span issues. And while you're doing a little research, read Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron to get a handle on what I truly feel about people who try to force me to dumb things down. You don't have a relation who goes by the last name of "Glampers," perchance?

In the interim, next time you're training tell your Sifu his technique is eloquent and cute, but that you'd really like to spar only using simple and ineffective technique. Let us know how that comes out.